Netflix’s new show “Sex Education” is a thinly veiled attempt to force a young audience into swallowing a liberal pill.
Asa Butterfield, star of the Academy Award-winning “Hugo,” now stars as Otis, the only son of a “sex and relationship therapist.” Because of his mother’s occupation and an argument observed between his parents when he was young, Otis has developed a sexual phobia that makes it difficult for him to masturbate. This is one of the driving plot points of the first season.
“Everybody’s either thinking about shagging, about to shag, or actually shagging,” Otis’s best friend Eric tells him, trying to explain why it’s weird Otis doesn’t masturbate.
Despite Otis’s unwillingness to touch himself, he’s picked up advice about sex and relationships from his mother, a situation fellow student Maeve convinces him to exploit for money. Together, Otis and Maeve–the sassy, brooding, pink-haired, lone wolf of the school—start a “clinic,” and Otis becomes a teenage sex guru.
The narrative leads viewers down a line of predictable plot points designed only to further leftist agendas: gay sex is cool, abortion isn’t a big deal, kids should have sex, and Christians are bigoted hypocrites.
Instead of asking, “Should public schools inform students about how to have safe sex even though that makes the assumption that they will be having sex?” the show slams its answer in the audience’s face: “Kids shouldn’t just be informed on how to have safe sex; they should know how to have great sex—and lots of it.”
Although Otis tells one of his clients she shouldn’t feel rushed to lose her virginity, and that most people their age still haven’t had sex yet, the show drives home a different message. Otis is ashamed of his virginity and of his phobia. He’s forced to hide both from his peers, because it “could be bad for business,” according to Maeve. The only other virgin the audience knows of is portrayed as a crazy outcast, a loser at the bottom of the high school food chain.
Of course, the writers try to remedy this by having Ola, one of Otis’s love interests, come out as a virgin in the last episode. Unfortunately, they immediately lose traction when Otis kisses her, gets an erection and, in the final scene of the season, is finally able to masturbate.
Many of “Sex Education’s” scenes are humorous in a this-is-almost-too-awkward-to-watch kind of way. But ultimately the show serves as little more than a sexually explicit waste of time.
